‘Pull up at the corner,’ said V to the taxi driver. He paid, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and crossed it to assume an attitude of a loafer by the wall who had plenty of time and no idea as to how to whittle it away.

Thick unending throng of passers-by rolled past him. An infinite variety of rags and maps drifted by along the wide sidewalk in waves nearing and going, approaching and disappearing. They walked in twos and threes, and individually, rubbing shoulders with or dodging others. They talked business, shared rumors, argued hotly, laughed along or gave orders over their phones for that was a usual everyday crowd, all kinds of sorts, walking on, on, and on, the streams of fellow walkers in both directions at once.

Each one in their own casual wear mask invariably put on in public, the regular face expression ideal for the occasion when you’re a particle in the crows floating by V with his back leaned against the wall.

Neither he nor the wall impeded the mutual motion, both behaved decently, and did not interfere with the counter directional tide. We won’t make conjectures about the wall’s motives for falling in with that particular line of behavior while V as, hopefully, had been mentioned—and if not, then mark it well right now, it’s never late to learn—was a good-humored sociopath by his nature.

So, yes, that way he hanged there out waiting for her to turn up, in the attitude of a personage from an old naive romance or a movie, forgotten, black-and-white, who also stands so and waits for the sail to pop up in the radiance over the distant horizon, black-and white too.

Is he in love then? Think before opening your piehole, young man. This word got deprecated and almost taboo in the current millennium. We won’t deny that he tends to like her (much fucking more acceptable, see?) even though he does not shower her with likes because of his allergy to social nets. Yet, on the whole, he likes her that’s why he stands waiting there for her to pass by that corner because he knows where exactly she’ll be going to. Besides, he’s not having much to do now and he just fancied to shake his leg a bit tagging along with her in the same swaying wave of the crowd tide.

Ha! See? Didn’t I tell you? He’s made her fine figure out at last, about a half-block off. Where she walks wearing her personal mask of facial expression for public occasions. (All the world is a theater, remember?) Her visage is dimmed and not yet quite discernible, like the features in the map of the eternal companion of our planet.

But even at that distance he still both liked and admired the intent in her purposeful strides, even though her legs were not seen, screened off by the preceding waves of pedestrians. But he knew all the same that those were just classy, her legs were. Yeah, he knew it.

Patience, V! All comes in the proper time to those who can wait.

’Hi. Lia! You’re, looks like, taking a stroll to the commons? Mind a well-bred tagger along?

‘O, hi, V! How are you?’

Yes, he guessed it right, she’s wearing a skirt, not mini yet generous enough to not hide her knees, those heart-breaking knees killing—with modest tastefulness—on sight.

‘I’m fine, thanks. Just have to idle a couple of hours.’

V felt a firm pull at his pant leg.

‘Oh, hello cutie!’ He stooped over to pick up from the sidewalk the shaggy ball of a small dog.

Toto let out a happy yelp and licked V’s nose with her slick tongue of that slightly pink hue noticeable in jewelry items made of BERYL (if you are not aware enough to dig it what this here detail has just hinted at).

But if you’re still in the dark what’s what, why, we can start the whole story over again…

(Relax, I’m kidding… as of yet. So long, pal.)

The ¿Happy? End

[The book is free for download at

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1387002]

The first memory ain't a zilch to just discard and walk away whistling a random tune. Nope. At times, nothing else but the first memory keeps you going all day long. Don’t ask me why it’s so but it simply works. First Memory. Ha!

Now, if not busy running your daily squirrel wheel, try to guess why the first thing in the morning I strain my memory to recollect, as vividly and clear as it is possible for a guy whose Turing Test is positive, as of yet, which namely day it is? This here fucking today, eh? From the days’ of week perspective?

And only after my intense brain-storming abates and calms down to lull, I come over to everyday chores and tasks for living thru one more day in the framework of my walk in life…

So yes, by all the leads and clues Sunday it was when in the morning I looked out the open door. It’s hard now to decide what prompted my action, given too familiar both the view and soundtrack. Which suggests I just had nothing better to do at all so early on a Sunday morning. Yep, that was the reason, I reckon.

Anyways, there I stood leaning forward, arms apart and clutching both of the door jambs. Nah, no push-backs intended for I never pulled for no surplus straining. Aerobics is not in my line, if you dig the meaning. I simply looked out in the fresh early morning, and turned my head hither-thither, both ways, along the trodden path thru our jungle.

The cabins looked same as on any other day of week at such an early hour. Or, perhaps, a bit emptier because I had figured out that Sunday it was.

Not a soul alive in all Main Stem except for US treading from right to left.

As a free citizen of the indie jungle, Uncle Sam had surely all the right to leg it in whichever direction he felt, like, appropriate. On the other hand, here is your head sticking out between your door jambs and thinking “what’s the buzz?” because it’s your unalienable right to get surprised, since his cabin is on the left down the trail. Which means he starts his Sunday not by going out yet by getting in. Or have I missed anything?

Which situation did not contradict though the principle of peaceful coexistence in our free jungle, so quite rightfully sez I:

‘Hello, US!’

Because a hermie might feel affronted when addressed by the handle they had baptized him with not waiting for his expressed consent instead of his hermit monica.

‘Aloha, UN!’ sez he. ‘Why keeping yourself in confinement? Step out for a sip of fresh air.’

‘I would if not for my outstanding moral fortitude founded on M&C – Moderateness and Continence, if you dig basics.’

‘Nah. I’m still at contemplating the Pascal’s Wager – “to win all or to lose nothing”.’

US stood still in the rays of the rising sun donned in his Sunday best of retrovertible rags. His beefy claw clasped around the Slim E’s umbrella in the collapsed mode. Well, well, well! Here lied the explanation for his counter-habitual route – the fishy geezer had been on a visit to SE’s parts in the jungle to borrow the thing, that umbrella of hers!

‘Pascal is for suckers,’ sez I, ‘spews enthusiastic bubbles about the goods he peddles yet misses out to demonstrate how you set that “all” going and shies to specify the “nothing’s” parameters. So, whereto now? Fishing?’

‘Yep.’

The glint of lust in the old man’s eyes was just another evidence of accuracy of my guess. Wearing his fancy retroverties and schlepping a fully charged umbrella to surprise fish, huh? Am I wet behind my ears? Off to your time-leaps, US, that where you soaped your skies to!

Moreover, to the best of my knowledge, the ammo SE uses in her umbrella falls under “dum-dum” type in terms of demolition power. I can't even nearly imagine where she got the damn thing from when she turned a sturdy lying-flat Oblomovian. A standard disillusionment by the fact that there's no chance for a romantic relationship in the world of buck-fixed alligators and blockhead dummies for a change. Both species are o for romantic purposes, a swarm of blood-sucking free riders (so SE).

And—speak of the devil!—that very moment I caught a low buzzing. It sounded plummier than that of a fly or mosquito. But the latter could safely be ignored in calculations. For a considerable stretch mosquitoes kept skirting around our jungle. The smart buggers got it that biting anyone from these here hermies would only trigger genetic mutations, mean and nasty.

Could you fly your 264 pounds by mosquito wings? Well, they learned the hard way it was an uphill job and now simply shun visiting the location.

By the rule of thumb, there remained only bees and wasps as a plausible source of that buzz. Bees had been successfully eradicated from this hemisphere a year or two back. Thanks to widely used pesticide CR-74 “Happy Farming!” and the last of wasps I met a fortnight ago. Yep, I recollect it happened on a Sunday too.

The poor thing flew into my cabin and, after a couple of aerobatic stunts in my kitchen airspace, flopped on the floor flat dead for no obvious reason.

From my standpoint the happening was a hoot. Which misgivings got fully justified because—here you are!—the buzz increased to the level you could read like nothing else but a cavalry raid. Damn!

When you’re a classical sort of a hermie, the nearest see of authorities would sooner wink at your sticking around, a dozen miles off. The expenses for evicting operation meet a cold shoulder in the local budget and you may keep to your accustomed hunters-gleaners lifestyle.

However, it’s another kettle of fish about a collection of hermies in a jungle. An idle mudak may happen to post her vid to a random social net, like, a dozen of cabins shot from afar. The local big-shots would get their asses kicked by their superiors whose asses had been kicked, hierarchically, by a tweet of this or that billionaire piece of shit at GleamPhiz or Chirrupper. The usual chain-of-command, you know.

Now, hermies have heard it too, the buzz. Scattered along Stem Path with their maps upturned, awaited the seasoned crowd of 10 apostles for the final act in the routine – kicking our asses outta here.

Dick the Lamb, quacking in his boots, cast quick looks hither-thither, ready for a dash.

Calm down, kid, there’s no escape, all the passable treads outta the jungle are sealed off by their block-posts. Take it easy and accrue the episode to the stock of your life experience.

I still could not make US out midst the audience on the path. The shrewd cat, like, was in time to take his time-leap. Well-armed too.

It’s time for me, vigilant UN, to grab my portabilities. They never frisk the pockets fearful to hook up a fresh strain of an insectological civilization.

Fare thee well, my cabin! The right door jamb had always been my fave. It took me a week to carve it with my pen-knife out of a young oak-tree felled by a lightning. I hollowed a delve in it for my treasure trove. The best stuff you can hope for between the current date and St. Nicolas’ birthday or whatever moniker the guy enjoys in your particular confession of candle eaters.

Outside, the bulls slide down the ropes in their hovering monkey circus. US is still nowhere to see. A wise move. His Green Card had expired long ago and turned hot red in color. Which means deportation to a nondescript tribe in the middle of any nowhere on this globe and no native knowing how to respond to his “Aloha!” nor to “Kanichwa!” still less to “Parev Tsez!”

Yet, my clairvoyance fits keep aggravating, yeah. I figured out this eviction from the dead wasp's air-trick maneuvers two Sundays back as well as the US’s plan to…

‘Hey, you! Out!’

‘Yes, sir! Yes, sir!’

Now the bull-skunks will spray the area with some stinking shit that makes the whole area unlivable for at least a couple of years. My stash and pen-knife safely pocketed. Yep. Not for nothing I never liked Sundays.

‘I’m on my way, sir!’

He was both mortififucked and flafuckbergasted even though knowing that none of such fuckery was stocked in the armory of Counter-culture jargon nor in stashes of Underground shit regularly groomed, spruced, and injected with the thrice gelded claptrap squirted off around by news programs. Yet, the frustration he ran into, the monstrous enigma stuck right into his nose from the screen with another section in the orderless jumble of eff_thoughts_008.txt file radically disconcerted his ability for expressing the concurrent state of mind by more articulate means from his mother tongue.

The thoughts fished up 3 years back. No translation attempted. The catch was just dumped as is, raw, into the section. Maybe, the stuff’s being ‘raw’ made V fly off his handle and part with his decent, on the whole, manners and steered into unprecedented transcendental search for some unknown esoteric terminology. Quite possible of alien origin, the stuff was. Taking into account the wildly chaotic kind of reflex triggered off by the situation, quite possible. For simply self-preservation’s sake he had to disentangle from the frustrating consternation, which is the most plausible purpose of all that explosively transcendental shit.

That was the underlying reason degrading him to improper (linguistically) shrieks from the very core of his abused soul, like, ‘mothermortifucking’, ‘flafuckbergastshitting’ and stuff.

But let the first stone be tossed at him by that goody-goody one who would present a proof of any violation by the above-pinned terms of the sacred rules of normative language usage.

Well, who’s got the nerve? Come on! Shove it up any censor-editor software and – what? Any evident transgression found? Huh?

(S__t no! I be f__ked! The f__ker would sooner blow up its fuse than ferret out indecencies in the gibberish! Sorry for my emotional outcry joining that of V’s, yet in the humanly comprehensible way instead of his whimsical mortififuckery.)

And, since all of us know as well as I do that even an Open AI trained in all kinds of legal casuisticalities cannot concoct a case to sue V for anti-puristic paganism propaganda then what? What namely started so indescribably tempestuous excitement you rarely meet even in psychology handbooks, and indiscriminate use of words of obviously out-of-earth coinage?

At first sight, nothing special, it was just a file section with his thoughts dumped into. Okay fine, so what? It’s time already to get used to. But it’s when and where the fucking “but” blew up.

Yes, the thoughts were his no doubt, one hundred per cent his, BUT he had never thought them. Never. Ever. At all…

Were it otherwise he would remember thinking them. He’s not a not all there geezer succumbed to Alzheimer, aggravated by galloping sclerosis and progressive amnesia or the like niceties from their bunch.

(No wonder though, during his career the poor star had to act too many villains and heroes for his memory stack to keep the trace who’s he right now, what all these guys in white want of him, and where’s the fUcking clapperboard?!)

At the same time he was quite aware (albeit in a parallel way) that the thoughts were his. Besides, even his name coincided! No Bill Gates or that same Musk would think to themselves: “Yep, V, you’re in deep shit here!” or some suchlike stuff.

Yes, the thoughts were his (even though he never thought those) but the facts! Nothing of all that had ever happened! He’d most certainly remember!

Yet the “but” came not alone but with a sidekick ‘but’ and their team was, like, that notorious steel breaker which HealthCare does not recommend kick against. Because, at his probation period in the Institution, V got a clear idea that you can counterfeit a thinking style no more than change the thinker’s finger prints or the unique spot pattern in the skin about a giraffe’s neck (aha! now you got it too!).

The situation left him no other options but to let steam out in the shap of those linguistic mutants and went on reading the section in eff_thoughts_008.txt, and in the process be moving half-a-step ahead of every turn in thoughts of V-narrator, about things that V-reader never did yet knew beforehand the slightest detail, subtlest change in mood and motives presented therein. That was the way he read on confusedly mingling with some other V who was not him because he himself was that one who… that is… well… where are we? chaos! Chaos! CHAOS!.

(Fuck the senatorial salary! This kind of job will make you good for nothing but the sanatorium. Who needs that? Let’s split, V, right now!. Damn, he cannot hear… Hey, V, wake up! V! V! V! V! Look at you, V, what a fVcking mess all them those bitty bit-bytes are making of your V-screwed brains! They’re sucking out the last V-itamins from your V-nut noggin… Ha! Did I stutter? He does not react. All of him immersed into that eff_thoughts_008.txt because of which he’s not all there or not quite himself or… anyway it’s more than enough I swear!.

Damn! What to do? Slapping his damn cheeks? Nah! Forbidden. There always should be kept a distance between the author and his protagonist and God save you from ever boxing their ear! Anything else passes over unquestionable, do whatever you fancy, even dropping them off a skyscraper is no problems, moreover if it’s an American moron having no idea that ‘power is truth’, as G. Hegel told S. Balabanov, the director of the film “Brother – 2”.

And if your character behaves, you may give him rise up to CEO of the III Reich Chancellery to spite Goebbels. I know one unceremonious author, who just shoved his heroine under a railroad train and walked off free, like, I’m not the locomotive, I have had no body contact with the lady and my hands are washed with soap. Always.

As if the locomotive could do a thing in that situation, it had to keep up to the timetable… meaningful winks at each other in “Know nothing” style and heaps of alibis. And the killer author’s renown skyrocketed in no time especially, by the by, in that same America.

The horrid stuff became a famous movie, being remade on a regular basis. At managerial meetings in Netflyx they handle it both nonofficially and lovingly “Goldmine Choo-choo” to mark its annual enormous contribution into the company’s income.

However, you should understand the feelings of an average American as well, screwed up any way imaginable by the chauvinistic feminism. At least the Factory of Dreams production let them blow off some steam.

Hell! He still can’t hear me. Ahoy! V!)

«

Freak is not a loner by their nature. On the contrary, solitude freaks them out, the freaks. They just can't stand it, 'sitting all by myself' is the ultimate fright for them. Can even pee in their pants, some freak can.

For that reason they love to hang out with a crowd – cheap and effective, works like a charm. Cheap medication? Depends on the patients wallet. How much is the ticket to Beauty Queen inauguration? Or to the UEFA final? All is relative. Choose your range in the price list carefully. Don’t stretch your legs beyond the cover length or something along that lines.

And here comes the exact moment to scratch the philosophy bump in your skull. Which is the right dose when applying the medication?

The more, the merrier, bro! The thicker the crowd, the more fun!

2 is a company, 3 – a team, and so up the skyrocketing curve: gang-squad-crowd-tribe-nation-global community…

When not alone, you’re bigger, stronger, surer, fitter to make outsider freaks bite dust, those unlike us… who are less in numbers… those not assimilated as of yet… the freaks who are still not we, not with us.

‘What’s up? What are you at?’

‘Well, just writing.’

‘Whoa, man! This splash of tangled spaghetti is really your hand? No shit? The stuff is just unreadable.’

‘Etruscan’s illegible.’

Maybe, the guy is right. Should I practice typing at keyboard? 8 fingers plus 2 thumbs are more than just the latter two. Even the most slowed down of Paart’s pieces are not for a one-handed piano player… Looks like I need the skill. To reach the level of 27 characters per minute? Huh? Who knows, maybe indeed possible.

The last straw to break the back of my camel-obstinate procrastination became the $100 prize of monthly carrot in competitions at prozza.com to stimulate the gang of talents registered. Yeah, nothing doing,I have to train myself… There should be some programs to acquire the skills, should there?

It was not the first online crowd I’ve taken a shot at joining. Chat-rooms, online courses sending you spiffy certificate picture in PDF format for you to adjust the size and print it for your den wallpaper, joined flash mobs for fun and recreation, GitHub, Stackoverflow, Linux communities for computer music makers, forums of Linux music makers, wine-lovers, joint suckers, scuba divers… you name it.

It’s only that I somehow didn’t hang on for long, got bored or switched over to something else and later felt, like, lazy to pick the same stuff up and shake it on. However, with the MoM thing my usual routine broke, I stuck by and kinda didn’t feel like ditching it. The force of habit, maybe.

Firstly, the site had an exquisite interface, and the MoM meant business, you got it still at signing up. No questions concerning your credit card, age or gender. But, you had to tick “I agree” box, as if installing MS Service Pack of patches to your desktop and even add your digital signature at the bottom of that long form.

Well, and who would read all the blah-blah in a form? Ever? Especially small print, like:

“Note #1: a member should prove their being monster but not a freak, because the Mob of Monsters is for only those ready to attest their monstrosity on daily basis and thus confirm their right to hang out with the MoM.”

or further down:

“Note #2: deleting a MoM account is not a way to get off the hook and walk away.”

because of:

“Note #3: The MoM objective is to free the world from freaks by pruning them off.”

A crafty catch there, huh? That way a renegade MoMist did not last much longer than their deleted account, not even by means of a spontaneous flight to some exotic nook on the planet. Yes, the Internet and AI have made of us one global family with differently colored pennants above the separate barracks in our common camp.

Fugitive freaks got erased differently. An extensive choice of instrumentality for the purpose. Starting with blockhead MoMists ready to annul the freak in a straightforward simplistic Kamikaze style, and up to a carefully thought thru multi-move combination of an egghead leaving not a trace of their behind-the-curtains shadow in the scene of accident.

A traitor had not a chance of escape nor of finding a hole to lie low.

The MoM was a self-policing politically autonomous society embedded in all kinds of other political entities governed in their traditionally established ways. However, the MoM’s code came ahead of any other for a true MoMist. Not a little number of guys regretted bitterly their missing out on the habit of attentive reading preamble to agreements, still more cursed themselves for signing in on high under liquor-smoke-substance-etc.’s influence.

All jail-breaking tries ended monotonously alike – ragged flashes from patrol cars, checking the body to find the notorious “black mark” (in grateful memory of Billy Bounce, John Silver at al. from The Treasure Island by Robert L. Stevenson) clutched by the body’s dead hand or inserted into it’s pocket, or shoved up… the details tend to depend on particular circumstances, you know.

The tastefully designed MoM logo on the dark side of the card, and the reverse with the reprint of the demised defector’s digital autograph presented the constant grim attribute to that sort of cases. Quite telling an evidence it was for the detectives to deduce that their police station got another albatross of insolvable homicide hanging from their neck. And even if they follow the right track, the bitchy suspect at the last moment would just kill himself for being fucked up any way.

The MoM activities? Get-togethers, sure thing, what else a mob is supposed to do?

Weekly all-out meetings. At the startup period regional but later, when the process of snivel-freak culling, removal of renegades as well as suicides caused by depressive forebodings reduced the numbers of MoMists the meetings grew over into global events. Of the same frequency though.

3 consequential meetings unattended served a clear-cut clue that the guy’s unfit to stay in the ranks of MoM, volunteers to straighten the situation out hit Grinning-Skull button to get, if selected randomly, the “black mark” signed by the weakling who had dropped out of the race. That same routine as about renegades. To pepper up the shebang, the “black mark” not realized in 4 weeks indicated the undertaker’s unfitness for a… follow me? Yep, after a month wasted, the unproductive performer’s “black mark” popped up for volunteers’ roulette at the following meeting. Simple and sweet.

The online MoM meetings order knew no changes. MoMists attesting their monstrous worth. It could be, say, a selfie against the backdrop of a kitten hanged DIY or a picture of an anti-personnel land mine to be planted lovingly in the neighbor’s lawn plus the clip of city news report on the effect. All depended on the MoMist resourcefulness and imagination.

The all-in ballot wound up every online meeting, the dude whose nick hit the bottom in the Horrid Deeds list knew it's time to put their personal matters in order and/or acquire a lot in the cemetery of their choice or go on a drinking-fucking spree up to his last dollar. Tastes differ, you know.

It goes without saying that outside freaks took shots at intervening. Like, parents who had some ambitious plans for their scions, governments offended by the fact of some other bodies kept messing around with their potential cannon fodder and egg-heads,employees at federal security agencies because it’s what they were getting paid for.

The MoM site would be crashed, hacked, banned, replaced with redirection to the infamous '404'.

During a week MoM members found a missive in their email boxes, the link to the site’s new whereabouts. Welcome back, Mob! The glorious design of indomitable site added a gleaming button “Report an infiltrator”. Buckle up, fellas, on we zip!

Along that way of epic glory and grand achievements the MoM dwindled out into the upscale elite group of hundreds then tens Mob Monsters. The Great Magister Monsters.

A startup dare-devil who did not gave a fuck and registered (a fairly rare event as of late) was not to survive for long. The times of selfie sharing at “webinars” were gone for good.

When the Magisters’ number decreased (or, rather, heightened) to 9, the cam eyelets in the notebooks of that Magnificent Nine were safely plastered. Some over wary cats spoke thru Voice Changer Device which gave to their sound that effing accent of retarded bot with its balls screwed on too tightly. Still dropped in tracks, VCD or no VCD, with all their 9 lives each,because now there remain just 2 of us. I and Bart.

The showdown of the last of Mob Monsters needed no ballot neither VCD. Because on no sane guy you could sell the wheezy gurgle of half-choked squirrel as my natural voice, I need no distorting gizmos. As for Bart, he’s too much in love with his opulent baritone.

Yep, so we are, no cosmetics applied – a scraggy squirrel vs. conceited Narcissus.

For than reason, in full conformance to the MoM regulations, here am I on a 3-week vacation and no longer, hiking in this here wild mountainous back country. Not alone I am, a MoM old-timer feels better in a company. Nimeta is both my trip companion and my girlfriend, 2 in 1.

She's a cute-looking chick though not too bright which makes her even better. It was not falling at first sight for each other, notwithstanding her superb physic. But then it somehow turned into a stable relationship. Yep, somewhere up to about a year already. Anyways, she keeps a more precise track of time.

That time, about a year back, I just thought, ‘What the hell? Why to reject a nice extra blanket by your side? Just in case.’

But then, a beauty is admirable for 3 days at most when staying at your home. That’s why we live separately thanks to the wise advice of that Irishman who knew a couple of things about this world’s ways and stuff.

And for this here trek I surely need an extra blanket, nights in the highlands are pretty chilly.

I planned to go up the river valley to where there are waterfalls in the satellite map, not too big to lure tourists to this hinterland, which did enhance their attractiveness to me.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t hire a local guide in the farmsteads on the way. At this stretch in summertime the rednecks are too busy making hay at their tilted lots in nearby slopes. Having no time to brush sweat off their brows, they simply explained to keep to the old cow path along the left bank.

When the path got lost in the woods, I just went on. Path or no path the left bank still remains the left one until you turn back. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!

So we proceeded – the effing Pathfinder (I) leading forth and Nimeta puffing hard, and stomping bravely behind my back, and no complains. That’s my girl!

At some places the riverside cliffs jutted too close to the riverbed and those we had to skirt around from above climbing the slope grown with thick woods. The river remained down there roaring along, unseen thru the treetops in the descending wood.

And then there started the second tier of cliffs. Climbing farther up the slope to bypass them as well seemed like too much of an uphill job. So I walked on keeping close to the foot of the cliff formation rooted in the ledge of, like, over-50-degrees slant that kept growing steeper with the progress.

The most scurvy looked that loose gritty layer blanketing the ground. A kinda fine scaly slug in the layer rustled and spilled of in weeny brooklets from under your boots. The goddamn nasty hissing plus scary sight of those tiny rivulets of bitty dry grit rolling downward at every other step. And only the inertia of moving on did not allow to stop and think, until the slant became too abrupt.

It’s only when I pulled up, turned to the 50-feet-tall wall of gray cliff on my right and gasped from the revelation, I got it suddenly where the stone scales had been peeling off!

I turned around, Nimeta stood some ten feet off but I had no time to share the discovery. The hiss grew louder and I glided down standing midst a sprung up current of dry grit. The drift gathered momentum. My boots half buried in the flowing scales.

I took a GS left turn approaching a lonely tree trunk stuck out from the almost sheer tilt covered with gray scales too slippery to even stand upon. The trunk withstood my desperate cling. Yet, there was no time to take a breather nor make up my mind. Another dry grit-fall whooshed by. I looked up thru the eye-smarting sweat pouring down my face.

Nimeta glided past sitting on her behind. My left arm shoot out towards her, our hands clasped. Her slip braked, she hung on our handgrip. The stream of dry debris tumbled on to leap over the tilt edge down the wall into unseeable void.

She did not scream. The tensely drown lips in the pallid face let out no sound. The hiss died away in the river’s roar down there. The dry trunk of the dead tree twitched and creaked. But she kept silent.

Yet the eyes, her mad eyes. That insane fright stilled within them.

The clench of out hands was giving in, slackened slowly. Her wrist, moist with sweat, slipped thru my fingers.

There was no yell, all I heard was that hollow clump drowned by the non-stop noise of the mountainous river rolling on.

After a while I freed myself of the rucksack and let it roll over the edge. A 40-feet length of light synthetic rope stayed by me…

She lay face-down in a small, meter-wide inlet of backwater rimmed with rocks smoothed by ever hurrying current, still placid water spot it was, no deeper than a couple of inches. The hump of her backpack stayed above the water, safely dry.

I scooped out from her checkered jacket patch-pocket her iPhone to leave the body anonymous. Before the hicks get thru their labors—if those ever end—the woods gulpers would see to her becoming one with Nature.

Then I collected my rucksack a couple of meters downstream, drenched thru and thru...

A week later I raised the lid of my notebook and put the iPhone next to it.

Unbelievable, yet hacking the phone password had taken 4 days. Neither “Nimeta” nor her birth date, nor the name of Prince Charming she played mamas-&-papas with way back in high school didn’t work. Getting access turned an uphill job. Nothing of interest in the effing brick except for the file with passwords in Documents Folder.

To log in I typed her nick and entered the password.

‘Hi, Bart!’ was I welcomed affably by the attractive MoM’s interface.

I attached Squid and scribbled. The ugly lame spaghetti ran:

‘Hi, I am V and I’m a murderer.’

It took one whole minute of waiting for the response in block letters ‘HI, V, GOT IT.’

I have no idea what future is ahead of this here half-choked squirrel but I’ll not die of ennui.

Bet your farm...

»

...the moon sailed away across the sky and I followed it as far as my eyes the only part in me capable of moving could go after to the very socket rims and then there remained just pin-prick narrow orifices in the dark-violet firmament thru which streamed moist gleam of the stars with the ever present plashing to their fluent glitter

stretched supine hovered I with my numbed back above the pain whose part I was not any more yet still felt too acutely its swaying throbs though at times alleviated with the gurgling of water in a languid brook among the Yorkshire marches and suddenly I recalled both my mother in her white Dutch cap calling “Jimmy! Come, son!” and the richly green verdure over wavy hills dissected with ribs of stone hedges and the sky above our village church and the invisible but ever felt presence of the sea beyond the hills

the ship became my home and wed to the sea I made my way up from an able man to commander and captain the renown cartographer and explorer of the South Seas commissioned by the Royal Society to discover Terra Australis which was not there yet instead I found new territories and islands bringing multitudes of new subjects into the shade beneath the Union Jack under the wise rule of the Crown and I touched the shores inhabited by dark-skinned tribes wild and savage the most horrid was the ritual of human sacrifice which I witnessed on my second voyage to the faraway hemisphere when I didn’t know that at the feast celebrating our ship arrival they would sacrifice a man

they brought him into the sandy square in the clump of huts under high trees like a great prince they brought him on a stretcher naked prostrate and to my question Omai answered the poor devil could not sit or walk for each and every bone in his body was split and crashed minutely except for the scull and that all of the past night he lay steeped in the brook to cleanse his body and spirit with a stone under his head to prevent drowning then under mutual chant and drum beating gushed the blood from the throat cut with the dazzling white knife and they split the victim’s stomach to splash the disembowelment offal onto the sand and we retired to the King’s hut where I was bestowing beads and trinkets of pewter to my sovereign host His Majesty was happy and his royal family too while from the outside in floated through the entrance the sweetish whiffs of baked flesh but I declined the invitation to partake in the feast sick belly after so a long sea journey used for the excuse

all that so vividly I recollected right now it is the third of my voyages and I remember the happening on the yesterday morning and our skirmish with the savages by the whaleboat on the beach in the swaying surf the dawn is nearing and the stars fade out one by one my mind is clear I am omniscient now I even know what will the main course be at the royal dinner

V raised his head a little to confine it within the cup of his hand heels and dove-tail-laced fingers before to let the whole jigger back onto the same tree root. The rigid rind felt somewhat hard for his self-made bolster. Still, he defined it bearable while lying, once in a while, on the slight tilt strewn with fallen but not wet as of yet leaves in the autumn woods. Once in a long while… Then he turned his eyes to the side where she sat looking off, her legs crossed asana-like, on the ground.

The lofty pillars of tall tree-trunks respectfully gave each other a pretty wide birth for drowsy slumbering. The light breeze flipped those deaf to reason leaves that still clung, here and there, to the tips of bared boughs. Neither foliage rustle nor buzzing of a random fly or bee yielded a soundtrack for the landscape only a rare hollow drum roll of a busy pecker echoed thru the cathedral-like void around. It was a mild sunny day. Stretched over the warm mat of leaves he felt good for quite a goddamn long while…

‘And you too,’ said he, ‘bro Brutus! Turned a cub yelping along with the pack as prescribed by the stolid traditions of corporate loyalty.’

‘There was no need,’ she shook her head watching closely a low blackberry bush. ‘You’ve accepted Ritter’s offer before our meeting.’

‘That’s what he told you? Grappled my thoughts out from the noosphere?’

‘I knew the outcome before he ventured to recruiting you. I know you too well ,V’

He set his hands free and crawled, still stretched on his back, towards the tree to lean his shoulder-blades against the trunk’s solidity.

‘Why this romantic rendezvous then? To seal the deal? The final nail into the coffin lid of a freelancer’s freedom?’

‘As always you ride in style, a too high horse though. Could you speak plain English?’

‘Will we meet as co-employees?’

‘Hardly. The Institution is a fairly branchy enterprise.’

He pinched out a weeny piece of moss from between the roots, rubbed it with two fingers against the thumb, sniffed at. It smelled moist soil and mushrooms.

She raised her eyes to meet his stare. The punch of the suppressed and since long forgotten pain landed hard, called for attentive examination of the smeared finger pads.

‘Jack missed out or, rather, dodged answering the first half in my 2-in-1 question: why me?’

‘It was R’s decision when it became clear that the Institution heads to an impossible workload with things getting out of hand and the concluding collapse all because of our—your and my—baby.’

‘What the… scam! We’ve never had a baby!’

‘It was due in two years. That’s why we split.’

’Who’s crazy here? I? You? Or R? It’s madness!

‘It’s the world we are living in, V.’

‘And after… Have you manipulated me? Well, by that goddamn retroaction?’

’’O, no. I have been simply looking after. May be, averted a couple of close calls… at most. I didn’t want you turn a wheelchair gimp because of an accident or stuff, you know.

‘When Lex alerted me over the phone, it was another of your preventive “looking after”?’

‘Not exactly. It’s a part to a wider plan. R is retiring. There’s the need of a replacement.’

‘Has he found it?’

‘Why asking? You know yourself.’

‘Is Lia a pawn in your game?’

‘Nah. Her ‘saving’ you was a surprise. As a consequence, we had to later improvise.’

‘Improvisation, huh? Fucking manipulators!’

‘You can’t leave the world on senile morons ready to demolish it to revenge their natural mortality, a kinda adding the door slam to their departure. And no better are younger imbeciles driven by greed or stupidity or by both at once.’

‘Another Conspiracy Theory? Some “Dark Wing” scenario? Forget the malarkey! Jingle-bells for pinging infantile teeners.’

‘”Dark Wing”? Bravo, R! He’s right about your talent of hitting the bull’s eye with blindfold shoots.’

‘Old fucking manipulator!’

‘Slow down, V. You’re in presence of a lady… Would you allow a baby to fall down off a balcony? Or to stick its fingers into...’

‘Fuck the old fucking motherfucker! How is it now? Plain enough? Or should I take a shot at a plainer talking?’

‘Looks like a passable “adieu”, Sir. Fare thee also well.’

She rose on her feet and slowly walked down the tilt towards the black SUV in the desolate dirt road thru the autumnal woods.

On entering, V turned around, locked the door and took a backward U-turn. The key, with the trained-up-to-automatism movement, was dropped into the lidless shoe box—his entry tray—fixed in the right-jamb corner. Then he passed over into the room and stopped in his tracks, very still, a kinda replica of the Praxiteles' masterpiece “A Spartan boy thunderstruck with an awesomely big thought”. Although he was not in the altogether as the original artifact yet the expression on his face and petrified immobility presented astonishing likeness to the mentioned work.

Everything around kept still as well, arranged in the order established on the day of his moving in – a monk cell of a pedantic hermit. However, he knew for sure the room was not the same anymore except, maybe, for the same silence pervading it but even within that habitual well-anchored muteness something had been shifted while he was amiss, even if for a splinter of micron. He felt that.

‘Anybody home?’ asked V out-loud.

‘Ahem!’ responded the kitchen with the voice whose owner kinda entered a 10-tonne vat at a work-floor of the Yerevan Cognac Factory so as to embellish its answer with a booming reverberation.

‘Don’t shoot the piano player, Mister! He tries to do his level best!’ came a peal of thunder from the deep innards in same production line container.

A two-meter tall contender for the title of Absolute World Boxing Champion filled the doorway with the outline of his bulky frame. Two huge bear paws aloof over his head. A beer can clutched in the right one. Despite the comic attitude of the facetiously cut figure, the eyes retained the dead attentive squint of a sniper at the shooting range, the notice ran clearly in the irises “No shit taken” warned at once that only biathlon guys were to make jokes there:

‘Sorry, pardner,I couldn’t help checking you fringe bowels.’

‘Fell yourself at home. My castle is your castle, Sir Rit.’

The giant’s left brow ticked slightly in sheer appreciation of his title and glorious name being so immediately recognized. Even before he had time to introduce himself. Which popularity is viewed as quite estimable rating level among the customary patrons of The Round Table.

(The Round Table so is named the bar by the closed-shop club “Arty’s Buddies” in the most fashionable part in our megalopolis and it is closed not due to the latest wave in the government sponsored fight against gambling but because they won’t grant you membership in their fucking shop. Some freaky snobs collection. The club chairman and owner of the bar as well, Rafic Vipian, is also a snob. As any other snobbish Rafic you’ll ever come across. In short, I wouldn’t recommend you the establishment. No decent food to meet there except for square barbecue. Which is aggravated by their notoriously unfriendly attitude to Ethiopians, whom they call ‘queue jumpers’ for God only knows which reason. What account squaring between so distant matters, huh? Kidus Giorgis is quite different kettle of fish from Ararat… Sorry, I fell back into the old rut, a soccer columnist I was before becoming food writer. Now, our characters all waiting for the referee's whistle to kick the game off.)

In two sprite strides the identified guest was by the chair and got seated. A pitiful squeal from the furniture item proved its failure to group up into a safe defensive attitude in good time. Yes, sport has no mercy for heedless gulls…

V landed onto the coach opposite the uninvited visitor:

‘What can I do for you?’

‘Be cooperative in readying a job application.’

‘Who’s the applicant and for which position?’

’Consider me a representative from the front office charged with making the offer that you can’t refuse, Mr. V.

So, the application is to be drawn up in your name and your prospective employee is known in certain circles as the Institution. And before we get over to negotiating the details, please do not shorten my name to Rit, “Jack” is enough to make me happy.’

‘The last point is agreed upon, Jack. But why me and what makes you think I’m in need of the goddamn certain Institution from some certainly fucked circles?’

The representative of the front office produced a short series of diminishing nods full of sad comprehension before to answer this, actually 2 in 1, question.

‘I won’t square you with the pudding’s filling, though it’s pretty creamy, take my word. But no, I’ll skirt around it because you’re aloof of so earthly matters. Your morning portion of manna from the sky and a bowl of soup of arthropod locust for dinner is all you need. Granted. Besides, no problems about jailbreaking, you are free, neither wife nor kids, nor mother-in-law. You’re a lucky man, V! You can enjoy your life remainder with these here toys!’ By a curt yank of his chin, Jack Ritter indicated the secondhand notebook on the desk by the wall and shook his head to shed off his no-way-to-hide envy. ‘They’re good, your playthings, no denying, and the passages from you literary tries—that write-and-delete routine, you know—are also top-notch.’

‘You’ve hacked my toys?’

’No need, pardner. When typing you dictate the text to your fingers. See? You think thoughts before they got fixed in a typed line. As simple, as that. Wired undercover finks, spy cams are now means to entertain the gully public in action movies, court rooms, you can reckon on that. Of course, by thought-tapping you can’t prevent mass shooting of kids invited to a sweet-sixteen birthday, neither dirty wars nor other nasty shit in the world’s constant balancing on the razor edge. To keep under control any spontaneously popping up piece of shit is a too uphill task. The Institution specializes in retroactive interference eliminating fatal snafus in our mutual nostalgically lovely past a second before the final fall of the guillotine knife.

So, besides the enormously immodest salary, cooperation with the Institution would give you an opportunity to become V the Multiple Savior of the World and live inconspicuously your life of a non-person. No medal decorations nor titles of academician or marshal, or laureate. But then, when retired, you may write your King Lear or other stuff. How about that?’

‘Writing a bestseller allowed?’

‘We’re not in for such crap, pardner, otherwise 5 min back you’d have cinched off your left foot prosthesis and riddle-smoked me with a round of dumdum bullets from the in-built machine-gun before fleeing by the fire escape ladder. The shitheads come with delight confluent into a nationwide orgasm and start picketing your place 24/7 , their slip-slap posters demand to go on with the sequel while a couple of Korean girls threaten with their suicide if you refuse, still keeping their geographical belonging—South or North Korea?—too close to their waistcoats…’

‘You’ve missed out adding the buttons unbuttoned over their yummy navels. Yet, on the whole, you’re good at fast-talk, Master Jack.’

‘Not for nothing I keep in the down-most drawer of my desk the Gold Medal of World Hassling Champion with Diamond Pendants.’

‘I need time to think your preposition over. How do I contact you then?’

‘It’s on the house. We’ll contact you after you make the only right decision.’

’And who were they? Those instructors on how you were to answer my question?,' asked V, ‘Federals? The guys that grabbed you at the Cabin?’

‘Those were not feds but security guys from the Firm I’m working for, and the enterprise has nothing to do with the government.’

‘Then who’s the Firm working for?’

‘For some global structure superimposed over all of the world governments.’

‘Really? Again? Is there a hope we’ll ever drop ruminating the old drab cud about Masons? Another variation of Conspiracy Theory for high school kids, huh? O, give us peace with the stuff.’

‘Blown your steam off? Take it easy, there’d no questions on the shit in examination papers,’ Lex got seated onto the coach. ‘May I ask for a glass of water?’

V fetched from the fridge a bottle of mineral water. His guest sipped a couple of gulps and screwed the cap back.

‘If you allow a question, V, not quite comfortable... But I’ve been keeping it back for too long and just can’t help taking a shot at. Beg your pardon in advance, for the sake’s sake, you know.’

‘I be fucked if it’s old Lex speaking. You’ve sunk me to the bottom of the grimmest suspicion, is it you, my friend? Fire it off, you are pardoned for the sake’s sake.’

‘Well, now… damn! It’s hard… I wanna ask why you split. It was clear to anyone that you were in… well, so to special for each other.’

‘Once upon a time it was called “love”, young boy. Yes, I loved and I was loved. Splitting was not my idea. Supposedly, she wanted to have another moment of inexpressible happiness for which purpose she needs setting someone free. If that one is Fluffy or me makes no difference.’

‘I can’t get a flake of it. Who’s Fluffy? Are you high?’

‘Forget it. My fault, just a slip of tongue. How are you, by the by?’

‘Wanna know how I am? Huh? Thank you. Everything is just fine except for a weeny trifle that there is no Lex any more, neither Alex Taylor Jr. can be met anymore. How am I? Ha! You’ve asked for it. Now watch for yourself!’

He rose on his feet and—a bit careening—yanked apart the skirts of his unzipped windbreaker and uplifted them kinda spreading wings in a Batman-like move.

Icy cold grip of primeval horror made V’s blood freeze in its vessels at the terrible sight exposed so ruthlessly. Instead of the jovial plump sybarite he knew for years, a sullen skeleton stood before him in a tartan shirt hanging loosely down from his rigid skinny collar-bones.

‘’Surprise!’ croaked Lex. He grabbed with his hands the only bump under the shirt fabric, like, a pound of grain poured into an empty checkered sack (the argyle pattern of McGuire clan) pending under his waist and gave it a clockwise twirl and then, after a heavy sigh, wobbled back in the counterclockwise direction.

‘O, no!’ cried V out guessing in dismay that the sack contained the surplus skin which had not yet contracted, that very skin which a couple of months back covered the wide stomach of his gourmet friend, ‘How could it be? Tell me, bro! Tell me all’

‘All? It would be painful, man. Yes, it would.’

‘Don’t you mind, I’m not squeamish.’

‘I cannot eat. Deprived of the foremost function of a human. Well, technically—chewing, gulping down—it’s still there, I’m able to stuff my stomach but I don’t feel anything, not a drop of joy that made me so happy at the dinner table. So, why eating? Yeah, I can nibble on this or that, a hot-dog or burger during a day, when I remember. Where are they gone to? My lustful raids to the fridge in the dead of night? I have neither appetite nor hunger.’

‘Oboy! O, poor, poor,dear Lex! But why?’

‘Because of all the shocks, I reckon, which I had to live thru.’

Unable to hide the vestiges of hesitation still lingering about him, Lex gave out a nervous cough and anchored his look in the corner before to proceed:

’I meat her a year after you broke up. A chance running into each other, in the street. She suggested dropping into a cafe. Who’d say “no” to such a gorgeous woman? So, there we sat chatting when all of a sudden I saw – she’s flirting! Vamping in earnest.

Well, what’s there to tell, we’re all from the same pod… when you can’t really see whether it’s hot or too tight… Some whooping throb in my head and I am gabbling the most helpless hooey.

‘Once upon a time in old good Japan,’ sez I, ‘any poor devil of a penniless vagrant samurai could arrange a date with the top-notch geisha on credit, paying in the morning with his harakiri by her gate.’

‘I’m not so versed in Japanese history,’ sez she.‘How about paying for a one-night stand with a friendly favor?’

‘Which favor?’

‘The details can wait till the morning after.’

‘So, well… when the morning came she wanted me to run an errand and pass her message to you:“V’s been the best lover of my life”’.

‘And then?’

’Then I saw her just twice. The first time in a week after... well, after fulfilling the request. In the same cafe she thanked me for keeping up to the deal and suggested I would apply for a job in an Institution I never heard of… She said the employees were well paid there. I refused to believe the salary she mentioned, were the employees there senators or something?. It turned out she was not kidding…

The second meeting was two months ago in the office of Ritter. Security boss in the Firm. I was instructed to pass you a memory card of those which we’re dealing with there. I was told it’s not a breach of regulations, simply there was a need to skirt around some clumsy regulations for the sake of general benefit.’

‘So your arrest was a rehearsed action?’

‘Yep.’

‘And later you warned me on Ritter’s phone?’

‘Exactly… Then I was told to move to a new location and change my vehicle. That’s all.’

‘And now you’ve been instructed to feed this tall story to me?’

‘No, man! I was looking for you of my own accord! I knew your habits, favorite places to hang out... Then I followed you to this place… I can’t describe what a relief it is to have all that off my chest.’

Now Lex was looking straight in V’s face. No evasive eye-wiggling. His breath was audible, the chest pumped visibly like accordion bellows under the open windbreaker.

‘Hey, V! I can’t believe it! Looks like I’m hungry. I swear! I can feel it! Wow! Any chow in your fridge?’

...it does not rush in in a throe, this pain, it is past pangs or cramps, beyond scorching lashes and smarting throbs, it kills with its even stability, kills yet let me not die, keeps in steely bounds of torture device filled with the victim smashed and squeezed into the mold of no escape, mauled in to fill the tiniest corner, it does know its trade, the pain…

...yet even the most excruciating torments grow blunter little by little, we fall out, asunder, me and the pain, we’re not any more one whole spliced inextricably into one knot, and although it is still here, inside, by, around, still wrenching and keeping me in agony, yet it’s not a part of me, no, not any more...

...the thinnest, like a shroud rotten to dust, a flimsy almost non-existent membrane of numbness swaddles me, the brittle shell of nothing, disbands from the pain, gives me some sparsest layer of alienation… there appear some smithereens of space to feel myself a-hovering over the ever-present pain… allow for an infinitesimal room that let me grow into I… who am I?

I am what I am what I am… I am what I feel still beside but aleady besides the pain, this here pain… do I feel? what I feel?..

...it’s darkness pitch-black impervious, sticky darkness clinging from all the sides, I sense how thickly dense it is… I feel the black viscous darkness… water sound comes leaking thru, hollow lapping, soft gurgling of water midst this dark blackness...

...and I know that I have to do it, yes it’s a painful move, very much so, but I have to dare a try at one desperate heedless thrust thru the pain whose part I am not any more… I know it would stab, it would tear up… but I have to know if what I sense besides thick darkness is there, that hardly perceptible something… now! you can… now! DOO IT!… aoueeeeoooooooooo !

....thru the maddening pain and tears from under the eyelids pulled up in the supernatural straining… inundating tide of light flows in, flooding my open eyes… and I see that it’s good, so beautiful is the face of Moon craning over me, so close, full, high-cheeked, in her glorious beauty before my eyes open wide thru the throe...

...thus I saw how good it was, the mellow light streaming down from Her, sad and placid, and omniscient, who had come reaching for me immured in pain agony… who was bending over, spraying the glitter of weightless light… face to face...

That’s how I got created anew by Moon’s dribbling the light off Her face onto me stranded in ebb of endless distress wherein She discovered me maimed, mutilated shrieking for all to hear that I was a crushed warm, a slave of Pain Unendurable… yet the animal wail got transformed into a grateful moan towards Moon the Light-Giver…

And good it was…

...first of and above anything at all, exceeding everything by their supreme importance are now and here—the shortest jot of time and so narrow bit of space we occupy being crammed into the pod of these two—nothing but they constitute our both eternity and infinity.

People inclined to scrupulous consideration of things they come across in their progress to the better world in heaven or, contrastingly, to the hotter world in the roaring fire of hell, inevitably reach this very conclusion and take a shot at presenting this idea clearer, more descriptive form for eager seekers of reason and sense in their sublunary existence. They are vouchsafed, but not me, to enlighten the humanity with so radiant thoughts as this of mine. Because, even though still in possession of my aptitude for subtle reflections, for pondering on things ahead of the contemporary age, I’ve ditched entrusting them to paper altogether…

Dried up to the very bottom naps my inkpot, the dust grows ever thicker upon the lid and seals the hollow void under, the quill has been abducted for household needs, which are a plenty, by one or or other of the shrews from the garrulous bevy of womenfolk at this abode. To skirt around my possible expostulations at the unwarranted trespass, the skirts did it on the sly! The most surprising thing though is that they had somehow found out that I wouldn’t make a fuss about the quill pilfered for God knows what application. Some culinary needs, I believe, but they in the kitchen should know better.

But their innate smartness which they conceal so deliberately! Their ability to suss out what you’d rather keep to yourself. They know even things untold... Ha! Here’s another subtle, brilliant thought, a priceless observation to bequeath the posterity with, slips fading by, irretrievably. So cater for yourself yourselves, posterity, use your own wits to reinvent my sage remark.

Good luck, kids! Hopefully, you’ll accomplish the deed before reaching the venerable age when you have answers to any question whatsoever, under both the sun and the moon, be it full or waning, or even hid behind the jealous clouds… yes! in your limitless wisdom you comprehend practically all but none of those blockheads would ever think of asking you of anything worth an answer. For them you are a piece of furniture, the old wardrobe or rickety sideboard, you’re just a part of the room interior or of the view outside the window. Tell me, pray, who would ever start a discussion with a crooked, weather-beaten tree in the roadside? Who would tarry for a chat with it except for an insane poet?

So fare well, posterity, in your quest for answers you cannot pass on and wisdom no one cares for. Seek high and low and you’d inevitably find what you’re after and then scatter away your needless experience, let it be gone like withered foliage with the wind and get lost as happened to that my thought a moment back… hmm… what was it, again?

Aha! I remembered!. That keeping within the bounds of space and fleeting moment enhances your comprehension of eternity and of your place more clearly than, you know… yep, and so forth.

Mmm… and by the by, about them those poets, a really rare commodity they are and the most delicate flowers that bloom no frequenter than a couple in a century… or even one in two… If we look back, to observe the last one – who, in God’s truth, will you discern there worthy to be named a poet of merit? One, two and – that’s it! I and Quevedo, the sharpest wit of the Golden Age in Spanish poetry… No one else! But still and yet in every lane of any one-horse berg they count up to a thousand of poets a-tinkering their jarring clumsy nothing, their so called “verses”. O, tempora! O, mores!

And a propos of poesy… Even during my first incarceration, the one-month stretch in that common cavern of a jail, when they arrested me as a suspect to the murder of the senor killed in the duel next to our gate… yes! Even there I met a poet! Though it’s not for me to judge the quality of his opuses. It was an Englishman of their barbarously absurd parlance.

He communicated in a mixture of a school Latin and a score of broken Spanish words… maimed them so funnily, the words… A nice young man, yes… What was his name, again? Bill... Shax or Shoox… doesn’t matter… which meant, as he was trying to interpret, ‘shake bones’ or ‘quiver the shaft’… Whatever.

He often recollected his spouse Anne, unsparingly cursed her with any bawdy phrases… in Latin mainly… My bet is she was the reason for the poor devil to flee the British Isles… and the conditions in that prison!. nauseating shock… a mere recollection gives you creeps… no latrine, the inmates discharging their bodily refuse into filthy pails… horrendous disgusting stench!

As always, I was perfectly lucky. One month of running nose! That’s the fortune’s fave!

But that Biscayan ogre was a real pest! The one who stole a mangy ass from the padre in the neighbor village… Some beefy brute, that ass thief was. The men in the common cell were wary to fart near him for fear that sniffing the whiff would give him a hardon turning his train of thoughts to lusty recreation… fucking sodomite...

Poor Bill!. His asshole saw a great deal of abuse. But never ever his usual gaiety was lost… The guy of spirit, after the ordeal he would instantly perk up, like a young cock ravished by the mature rooster, and explain to me, between us, poets, that thanks to his bisexual nature it was a mere piddle and the heat accumulated from thrust-n-pokes of Biscayan passion would fill, in due time, the molds of his Sonnets with a sublime and penetrating impact … later… or plays, may be, when he put hands on a quill and paper… Yet, Mr. Shox-something learned the hard way, firsthand and in full measure what Spanish prison was…

And when talking of plays and stuff, who prompt’s us our thoughts? God? Satan?

The latter should be recognized the more reliable provider of the two. His goods will never disappoint the client – first-rate evil, I be damned! Best quality in the market, and suits you so perfectly! None of the ready-made look! Take it, you’d never regret the deal! The evil you were looking for, exactly! Or cashback within a week or so.

And that same industrial espionage, eh? We were commanded “Thou shall not steal!” while He, Himself… ahem!. well, I mean, there are certain indications of undeniable plagiarism by means of copy-paste off the Competitor’s proprietary know-how...

Straight from the horse’s mouth on the inveterate Turncoat’s policy: He creates Eve, okay, He knows better, who am I to keep back His creative impulse? Hallelujah! Glory be to God! And in several days kicks her out Eden together with that victim guy who never got it ever what all that fuss was about, at all.

But if You are so Omniscient couldn’t You foresee the tricks your creature’s pregnant with?

Or else. The city of Gomorrah smashed into bitty smithereens, which is an undisguised genocidal action (if not to say more) as regards stray cats, dogs and sinless sheep swept away for no fault of theirs in the dead of night?

But the sect of Vegans are spying vigilantly on each Your step adding up to the bill… what? Some news to You? Those guys on freaky diet with their non-stop chant about the pensive look in Cow’s eyes and also of other domesticated Victims’ to the gluttonous humanity of humanoids… Yep. Moody, too effing moody…

Or are there several Gods doing shifts?

...o thank You, Lord, that I’ve given up on confiding to paper any hooey coming to my head, and thrice thank You, OMG, that the Holy Inquisition cannot read our idle thoughts because at times you careen in blabbering such heresy for which HI at once would land my ass and stuff in the bonfires to the glory of God Almighty…

They did not sing, the very first birds of day but, rather, were talking to themselves in a buddy-to-buddy manner. They needed no audience, no approbation, they only shared their opinion about the current moment to their most trusted, seeing what you mean, bosom friends.

No staple quips loved so much and waited-for by their fans, no taking a shot at getting another empty compliment… Nah! They, like the first, still drowsy, news program for yet sleeping population marshaled out in brief digest style, to themselves, their personal impressions from this here dawn widening around.

They were addressing no one but themselves (which has been mentioned already) the way of a bone-dry vet-aviator from WWII would broadcast to his favorite cockpit bench by the entrance to apartment block, not too loud just between them two, the bench and the vet, about his yesterday’s... or what, eh? yes, yesterday it was… visited that department, aha… and complained to that important comrade… personally… well, that same who’s as bold as Illych from flat 48… the machine-gunner… about that crazy lot upstairs… because them motherfuckers… shit, at all… or maybe it’s tomorrow… but he will go to that department.

The black birds sounded with tranquil pedantry while small-fry whistlers of wobbly complexes sought to overcome those with exaggerated harshness to their tweets...

Yet, she was not exactly attentive or keen on following the dove’s narcissistic, full-of-tender-love cooing and outright ignored the abrupt sarcastic observations of a moody goldfinch.

She was still basking and, just like they, did not care who chirped what. They did not interfere in the least with her half-slumber, just as their disordered multi-voiced chorus did not impede the gradual outflow of one more morning to which all of them were also a part.

The morning sun squinted sleepily thru the motionless serene foliage in the quiet trees.

That way, little by little, submerged she from her night repose under the calm gossip of birds, each one to themselves...

The house was located in the secluded part of a podonk town, in the southern outskirts of it, separated from the asphalted streets by the steep slopes of a deep creek all grown with the almost impassable thicket of sundry deciduous trees.

Once her pet Fluffy—a bantam half breed of sandy-colored hair who sported a gorgeous tail flaring like the cockade in the Italian carabineri uniform caps—broke his chain and ran away (the anticipatory complaints of neighbors from the cottages irregularly scattered thru the outskirts, who were too anxious about dog’s possible raids on the chicks populating their respective yards, deprived the poor thing of freedom, just in case).

The following morning she got up earlier than the first birds and discovered the pooch in one of the vacant lots about the neighborhood. The length of his broken chain was caught by the thorny bushes in the rank tangled grass. The dog met her with happy lament that woke the morning birds up. She looked around and understood the meaning of being happy.

Much later, when Fluffy had already passed away and Dad never told under which of the trees in the steep slope he buried the dog, she went off to live in a big city. In the tumult imprisoned between the stone street walls she was coming across neither birds nor trees to speak of, none of those she used to mingle with back in her childhood anyway. But still she knew for sure that moments of poignant unrestrained happiness did happen in your life.

That’s how she told me...

‘Yeah, that’s how she told me…’ repeated V to himself silently, not a sound produced, forgetful to press power button in the secondhand notebook, over which he craned his head and stilled a couple of minutes back.

‘Hopefully,’ added he with a wry smirk yet still as mutely as before, ‘this thought of mine would give the slip to their fucking net.’

They split in a correct, civilized manner. Each one moved to a separate lodging, their mutual account in the social net annulled and deleted.

For half a year he could hardly get it whether he was alive or otherwise. Then, little by little, he surfaced from the murky depth of his listless indifferent prostration. Developed a custom of shaving no seldomer than every other day and honored it. Almost.

To somehow fill his days, he began fiddling about computer things. A self-tutored programmer, no certifications, no allegiance to a particular programming language; a freelance outcast of no affiliation belonging to none of teams beavering about this or that product.

He just read tutorials and replicated their hands-on applications, typed away for hours fretting off the character marks in keyboard. Yep, he was typing, no copy-paste, all their snippets, anything, to whittle away the sticky boredom of his minutely regularized existence.

On the whole, he came on terms with a passable life style and they were getting on (V and his life-style) pretty well. Faith!

It’s only that at times he had those fits of phantom pain which may crash a guy’s limb long since it had been amputated.

There happened nights of desperate scramble to fight awakening off, he clutched and clung at the shreds of sleep to get back to the dissolving dream where he stood upright on his knees before her, his arms cast around her hips, his eyes dead closed—no! not yet! no waking up!—pressing his face tight to her womb...

Then he stretched supine midst black infinity. Wide awake. Indifferent. Unseeing eyes open. Just waiting for the morning to arrive.

In our beloved we love ourselves…

What?! Who told so?

Someone of too wise shitheads… what’s the difference?.

At times he also had those “gutted” days. Not overly often but they happened too, days filled with nothing, full of abysmal void. Stretches of time he had to live thru and, fortunately, he coped with the task. He did it by walking, sitting, producing occasional utterances, and waiting. He had nothing to wait for yet he knew that it would happen. What ‘it’ it should be he had no idea and simply waited for it to happen. Maybe, because of his waiting, such days passed too…

That sort of a day, exactly, V was in right now.

With a strange start, he woke and raised the notebook lid, wearily. The fleeting touch to the power button gave start to the slight purr in plastic innards.

A hurried knocking at the door made V start once again. He’d never entertained a visitor at his place, his rent was always paid a week earlier. Even the kids playing in the tier-deck-gallery, run along the row of identical apartment doors, never hit his one with a ball.

He got up and went over to answer. Right behind the door there stood Lex staring into V’s eyes. Unswervingly.

‘May I come in?’

‘What the f… How have you found me?’

‘I’ve been instructed how to answer this particular question… but may I come in first?’

‘Sure! Get in.’

V cautiously looked out in both ends of the desolate gallery grated with safety railing in rare spots of blurred glint reflecting yellowish bulb-light spilled, here and there, to contrast the gloomy dark of night with their cones of rarefied light.

Then he closed, and locked, and latched the door.